One page business plan template for agencies

Every good agency is big on planning for their clients. They facilitate strategic plans, they build marketing plans and they guide clients through the process of developing a digital strategy that can be woven into their overall communications plan.

But agencies stink at planning for themselves. Which is why I created a one page business plan template for agencies. Everyone can fill out a single page, right?

I’m not going to preach the reasons why planning matters. You know why. You preach it every day.

Instead, let me tell you a little bit about the plan template and how you can use it to grow your agency in 2013. I designed the template to accomplish a few goals.

You need to grow your agency holistically — rather than focusing on just one or two problem areas.

You need to do more than just identify some goals. I want you to flesh out the first few steps of actually getting started.

Every goal has obstacles. This template will help you identify those right up front.

You shouldn’t forget the less sexy aspects of the business like systems as you do your planning.

You can either work through this planning on your own, with your leadership team or depending on the size of your agency, with your entire team. While the end goal is to have a map for the upcoming year, one of the big benefits of putting together a plan is the process itself. These are the kinds of conversations you don’t have very often. Listen carefully and closely to what your employees have to say. You might gain much more than you bargained for when you use this one page business plan template for agencies. No agency owner knows everything that’s going on in their own agency — no matter how present they are. Pulling everyone together to identify some of the areas where you really need to focus in 2013 will reveal some things that you probably need to know.

The agency business plan tool is designed to help you focus on 6 core areas of your agency:

Leadership/Management

Staffing

Internal Systems

Financial

New Business

Marketing

The truth is — if your agency survived the past few years, you’re already running a pretty good shop. You don’t need to make huge, sweeping changes. You need to make smart adjustments. But imagine, if you could make one significant improvement in each of those aspects of your business — you’d probably enjoy a pretty good year. Now imagine if you repeat that process in 2014 and 2015 etc. How amazing could your agency be in five years?

Make the investment in your agency and your financial future. Do a little planning. This one page business plan template makes it pretty painless and the benefits will far outweigh the time investment.